8 July—As I was reading the ever-shrinking Republican-American at the breakfast table this morning, and sipping my ever-shrinking cup of coffee, who should appear at the kitchen door? Why, it was the friendly local Odocoileus family. Four of them, in fact, father, mother, two kids. But the kids were fawns.

Odocoileus virginianus is the taxonomic name for the white-tailed deer species, also known as Virginia deer. Even in Connecticut.

You couldn’t miss that daddy deer was growing a new pair. Of antlers. Bucks shed antlers every year and sprout a new set in the spring. Mommie deerest seemed more interested in me than in her kids—rather, fawns.

All four deer stared at me through the sliding glass door and I stared back. When I got up to get my camera, they calmly turned around and walked to the Tatarian honeysuckle and daylilies a few yards away. While I regularly see white-tails at the bottom of Pinchpenny meadow, they’ve evidently been up around the Hovel before, because the blossoms have been disappearing from the daylilies for about a week.

Through the years, deer, crows, and who knows what other hungry creatures have feasted royally in my appetizing orchard. They’ve been especially fond of cherries, plums, and pears. Just like me. So now the diversified 36-tree orchard is down to only three apple trees, one of which is on its last roots. Last fall, the deer were considerate enough to leave me a bumper crop of McIntosh, Macoun, and Red Rome Beauty apples. The deer, however, have never bothered the tasty rhododendrons that I’ve never protected. (This year I was introduced to rhododendron leaf gall.)

So by the time I got back to the kitchen, all but one of the white-tails had disappeared into the brush. I could barely make out daddy deer’s fuzzy antlers moving in the foliage. But I was able to get a few pictures of the lingering fawn who was nice enough to pose. Here’s one: